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Friday, 24 April 2015

Previously I made a post on the things you need to do to establish a good start in Don't Starve. Here's part II - tips for surviving.

So now you have a base with a fire pit and Science Machine.

Next, make an Alchemy Engine. Essentially, Alchemy engine is also a science machine but a higher tier one. It will unlock even more recipes which will help you in your survival. To make an alchemy engine, you will need 4 boards, 2 cut stones, and 6 gold nuggets/2 electrical doodads (RoG). To make boards and cut stones, simply go to the 'Refine' tab near the science machine and refine these items. In RoG, electrical doodads are needed for crafting alchemy engine. Electrical doodads are found under the 'Science' tab and can be made by using 2 gold nuggets and 1 cut stone.

FoodBasic:
[1] Gathering
To make things easy, first of all, make yourself a backpack (4 grass, 4 twigs). Backpack gives you extra 8 slots in your inventory, which makes gathering that much more convenient! Common food stuff that you can gather includes carrots, berries, seeds, mushrooms and birch nuts (RoG). For meat items, you can kill rabbits for morsels or spiders/hounds for monster meat. You can also kill other animals like Gobblers (that annoying turkey that steals your berries) for drumsticks. But I wouldn't recommend this as Gobblers run quite fast and you would end up wasting a lot of time chasing it down.

Cooked food normally have better stat restoration than raw food. Do take note on mushrooms because eating a certain type of mushroom raw/cooked will give you different effects! Here's a simple summary on mushrooms:

- Green mushrooms
Comes out during dusk, buried in the day and at night.
Raw: restore hunger, minus a lot of sanity! never eat this mushroom raw, seriously. Unless you wanna decrease your sanity on purpose, which I wouldn't recommend for beginners...
Cooked: minus 1 hp, but increases sanity

- Blue mushrooms
Only comes out at night, buried during the day and dusk.
Raw: restores health and hunger, but decreases sanity
Cooked: decreases health, increases sanity

[2] Planting
Make a shovel. Now when you go out gathering supplies, dig up berry bushes, saplings and grass. Bring them back and plant them around your base, for easy gathering of resources in the future. For berry bushes and grass, you will need to fertilize them after transplanting them. Here's where you will need to pick up poop from beefalo. :)
A fun tip: If you find a pig village, they often have a different type of berry bushes. It's essentially the same thing but they look cooler. You can steal these and plant them near your base too!

The cool ones found in Pig villages

[3] Farming
You will need lots of poop for this. With Science Machine, you will be able to craft basic farm using 8 grass, 4 poop, and 4 logs. Seeds which you've picked up can be planted in the farm. You can either wait for them to grow or fertilize it to hasten the process using poop/rot (rot is obtained from spoiled food items). With an alchemy engine, you can craft improved farm using 10 grass, 6 poop, and 4 rocks. Crops in improved farms grow faster than those in basic farms. Similarly, you can fertilize them to make it even faster. If you can afford it, craft improved farms without making any basic farms.

*I'm used to referring to manure as 'poop', cause, they are. When I say poop, I mean manure. Heh.

Advance:
[1] Bee box
Crafted under 'Food' tab, using 2 boards, 1 honeycomb and 4 live bees. To obtain honeycomb, you will need to break down an existing bee hive. To catch bees, you will need to make a bug net using 4 twigs, 2 silk and 1 rope (refined from grass). Plant flowers around the bee box for the bees to make honey. The more flowers you have, the faster the bees will produce honey. Honey is a very good food item as it can be stored for a relatively long time, and can be used to make honey poultice.

[2] Crock pot
Also under 'Food' tab. You can make this using 3 cut stones, 6 charcoals, and 6 twigs. You can get charcoal by setting evergreens on fire, and chopping it down after it is burnt. Crock pot allows you to combine 4 food items to make food with better stats. Simply combining ingredients will end up with wet goop, which does not restore any points to any stat. Here's a crockpot simulator which is super helpful for cooking using a crockpot.

this is the yummiest recipe you can make in crockpot, trust me. :P

[3] Drying rack
Can be crafted using 3 twigs, 2 charcoals, and 3 ropes. This drying rack isn't for clothes (lol), its for meat! Meat items (raw) can be hung onto drying racks, and will become jerky after some time. Compared to raw or cooked meat, jerkies can be kept for a longer period of time before going bad.

Basic protection
There are many wearable items that will give you different amount of physical damage protection. For me, personally, I would recommend a log suit and spear. The materials are easy to gather and they give a reasonable amount of basic protection. Making a log suit requires 8 logs and 2 ropes, while making a spear requires 2 twigs, 1 rope, and 1 flint. You don't have to wear these all the time. Equip them when you are about to engage in a fight or forsee that something is coming to attack you (hounds, for example). Take note that, when you equip the log suit, you will drop your backpack.

The next Don't Starve tutorial will be a detailed guide on making a bee box and establishing a bee farm.